According to Russian Aerospace Defence Forces spokesperson Alexei Zolotukhin, the country will build three new early warning radars in 2013.

These new systems will be located in the Krasnoyarsk territory of central Siberia, and the Altai territory in southern, central Russia. A third radar will be constructed at Orenburg in south west Russia.

All of these new radars will be 77YA6 Voronezh-DM systems. As reported in December’s ChainHomeHigh, Russia announced that a new 77YA6 Voronezh-DM radar would be online by March 2013, although a spokesperson from the defence ministry declined to specify where this new radar would be located. The 77YA6-DM Voronezh-DM is a low frequency radar operating in the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) section of the spectrum. The reported range of the radar is circa 4,200 kilometres (2,267 nautical miles).

Last summer, Russia declared a 77YA6 Voronezh-DM system located at Mishelevka radar station in Irkutsk, south central Siberia, to be operational. This radar is tasked with monitoring the heavens for missile launches from the Pacific Ocean and China. 77YA6-M Voronezh-DM radars have also been constructed at the Pionersky Radar Station in the Russian European enclave of Kaliningrad, and at Armavir Radar Station, south west Russia. A second 77YA6 Voronezh-DM could be constructed at the site in Armavir to provide surveillance coverage lost by the recent decision of Moscow to abandon the Daryal radar (see below) at the Gabala Radar Station in Azerbaijan.

The 77YA6 Voronezh-DM is part of the wider Voronezh family which also includes the 77YA6 Voronezh-M and 77YA6 Voronezh-VP variants. The principle differences between these respective systems is that the former is a three-segment Very High Frequency (VHF) radar, with the latter having a six segment VHF design. The 77YA6 Voronezh-DM, meanwhile, operates in the UHF range.

The 77YA6 Voronezh radars are being rolled out across Russia as part of a wholesale renewal of the country’s air and ballistic missile surveillance network. They replace the legacy Daryal and Dnestr/Dnepr bi-static and conventional phased-array ballistic missile early warning radars which have been in service since the mid-1980s (Daryal) and 1960s (Dnestr/Dnepr).